RAND Experts Available to Discuss Egypt, Jordan

RAND Middle East and North Africa experts are available to discuss the latest events in Egypt and Jordan.

Among the points they can address:

• What options does the United States have in responding to the crises in Egypt and Jordan?
• In Egypt, should the U.S. support the Mubarak regime, or the demonstrators?
• What influence does Washington have in Egypt? Is America's potential influence on the outcome of the crisis stronger than U.S. officials believe? And how could ambiguity deplete all remaining U.S. influence in Egypt?
• If Mubarak remains in power, will he crack down on the activists and other Egyptians? If the demonstrators succeed without U.S. support, will the United States have burned any remaining goodwill with the opposition activists who would likely populate a democratically elected government?
• How can the U.S. military help to keep the Egyptian military from getting involved in the demonstrations? Will Egypt's military be a power broker in whatever new government is formed?
• How will the crisis in Egypt affect the Israeli-Palestinian peace negotiations?

Amb. David Aaron is a senior fellow and former director of the RAND Center for Middle East Public Policy. He served as Deputy National Security Advisor to President Carter, acting as an emissary to Europe, the Middle East, Africa, Latin America and Asia, setting up the negotiations for the Camp David accords between Israel and Egypt in 1978.

Amb. Robert Hunter is a RAND senior advisor who served as director of Middle East Affairs on the National Security Council during the Carter administration, and was a principal author of the Carter Doctrine for the Persian Gulf.

Dalia Dassa Kaye is a RAND senior political scientist focusing on U.S. Middle East policy and Middle East regional security. She is the lead author of "More Freedom, Less Terror? Liberalization and Political Violence in the Arab World."

Julie Taylor is a RAND political scientist focusing on Egypt and the Middle East. Taylor lived in Egypt for five years. She formerly taught courses on political development in the Middle East at Princeton University and has written about regime stability in Egypt and Iran.

Lorenzo Vidino is a visiting fellow at RAND and an academic and security expert who specializes in Islamism and political violence in Europe and North America. His latest book, The New Muslim Brotherhood in the West, was published by Columbia University Press in 2010.

Jeffrey Martini is a project associate at RAND where he specializes in Middle East political and security issues. He lived in Cairo from 2007 to 2008.